Pfizer celebrates the faces behind its vaccines with documentary

Pfizer's latest extension of its corporate reputation campaign, Before it Became a Medicine, shows people the work that goes into creating vaccines.

The pharma company released a two-minute "micro-documentary" featuring the Pfizer employees behind a vaccine's development. The video highlights the stories of a warehouse specialist, site strategy manager, and quality control scientist and two sites in Wisconsin and North Carolina.

Rather than focusing only on the scientists who create the medicines like in previous videos, this film also shows the stories of the people who manufacture and deliver the vaccines.

"With this particular video, we wanted to tell the story of the incredibly complex process of creating a vaccine," said Sharon Castillo, media relations director at Pfizer. "All the people featured in the video are Pfizer global manufacturing employees. Each represents a critical step in making and delivering the vaccine.

The video highlights the logistics behind a vaccine, both the science and delivery; it shows that Pfizer puts in two-and-a-half years, 1700 people, and 678 quality tests to make one dose. The vaccine video is intended as much as a corporate branding push as it is an internal salute to Pfizer's employees.

"We wanted to show the commitment and drive to discover cures and to honor the hard work of colleagues in the 17 manufacturing sites in the U.S. devoted to delivering cures to patients," Castillo explained. "It's a salute to them as well as showing the scientific side of it."

Pfizer worked with director Tucker Walsh and BBDO to create the video. The video debuted during the National Association of Manufacturer's 2017 Manufacturing Summit in Washington, DC, this week. Castillo said a 45-second TV spot is to follow soon.

For now, Pfizer is promoting the video on social channels to reach a general audience who "aren't aware of what it takes to produce a vaccine," Castillo said. The paid social effort will continue through Q4.

Pfizer's Before it Became a Medicine campaign began in May 2016 and was the company's first corporate ad campaign in more than a decade, Castillo said. After several high-profile scandals -- particularly Martin Shkreli's drug pricing scandal in 2015 -- sent the pharmaceutical industry's reputation plummeting, Pfizer aims to show the public what the pharma industry really does and the work that goes into creating medicines.